Put Some Respect on the Theory: Confronting Distortions of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy

In this chapter, we discuss the origins of the theory of “Culturally Relevant Pedagogy,” grounded in Ladson-Billings’s ethnographic work that documented the practices of a group of teachers who supported academic achievement, cultural competence, and sociopolitical consciousness among their students who were predominantly African American, poor or working class. We then critically examine the landscape of pedagogical practices that go under the name of Critically Relevant Pedagogy, the problems of nomenclature, the challenges of practice, and the (mis)appropriation of the ideas as policy and framework in various schools, districts, and colleges/universities.